contingent attacks

[mocachild]

Hey all. It seems some people still look at this board so I thought I might give it a shot and ask a question. I just got into this game, was able to get all the roster books and rules books etc. Now, I'm really confused as to how a contingent attack is supposed to work. Skills like boxing have the option of a second attack being contingent. How do I play the attack out and what is the actual purpose of a contingent attack? Is there any benefit to a contingent attack, or is it just timing flavor?

Also one more question....

I'm a little thrown off about using power intensity to hit. It makes me feel that Hawkeye hits less than the human torch because Hawkeye uses his agility which is way less than the Torch's power intensity. Shouldn't Hawkeye hit his target more often?

Thanks all!

[MidrealmDM]

Normal attacks happen at the same time - that is a Villain and Hero both get their normal actions. Contingent attacks happen after that, so if the hero is KOd before their contingent attack, it may not happen (the narrator can allow it to happen anyway, a thrown grenade for example should explode even if the person who threw it is knocked out)

If you declare it, Boxing allows you to "divide your hero's total action score between two fist attacks, the second being a contingent attack."
Which means after generating your score you can split it making one attack normally and the other contingent.
Since boxing reduces the difficulty of punching someone, the difficulty would be reduced on each of the attacks. And it isnt required that you split the attacks evenly.
The main use for this would be to combo out henchmen and goons and the like.

Hawkeye does use his agility, but he has a worldclass skill in archery, which means any non-doom card played by him (from his hand) is treated as a trump card. This brings his archery scores up pretty high.
If playing him as an NPC character, you might have to fudge the results a bit to allow for that.

[mocachild]

thanks for the reply. makes more sense now!